Utility index and vision-related quality of life in patients awaiting specialist eye care

Aline Lutz de Araujo, Bruna Stella Zanotto, Ana Paula Beck da Silva Etges, Karen Brasil Ruschel, Taís de Campos Moreira, Felipe Cezar Cabral, Erno Harzheim, Marcelo Rodrigues Gonçalves, Roberto Nunes Umpierre, Fabiana Carvalho, Rodolfo Souza da Silva and Carisi Anne Polanczyk

PLOS ONE, 2024, vol. 19, issue 8, 1-11

Abstract: Objectives: This study aimed to ascertain utility and vision-related quality of life in patients awaiting access to specialist eye care. A secondary aim was to evaluate the association of utility indices with demographic profile and waiting time. Methods: Consecutive patients that had been waiting for ophthalmology care answered the 25-item National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI VFQ-25). The questionnaire was administered when patients arrived at the clinics for their first visit. We derived a utility index (VFQ-UI) from the patients’ responses, then calculated the correlation between this index and waiting time and compared utility across demographic subgroups stratified by age, sex, and care setting. Results: 536 individuals participated in the study (mean age 52.9±16.6 years; 370 women, 69% women). The median utility index was 0.85 (interquartile range [IQR] 0.70–0.92; minimum 0.40, maximum 0.97). The mean VFQ-25 score was 70.88±14.59. Utility correlated weakly and nonsignificantly with waiting time (-0.05, P = 0.24). It did not vary across age groups (P = 0.85) or care settings (P = 0.77). Utility was significantly lower for women (0.84, IQR 0.70–0.92) than men (0.87, IQR 0.73–0.93, P = 0.03), but the magnitude of this difference was small (Cohen’s d = 0.13). Conclusion: Patients awaiting access to ophthalmology care had a utility index of 0.85 on a scale of 0 to 1. This measurement was not previously reported in the literature. Utility measures can provide insight into patients’ perspectives and support economic health analyses and inform health policies.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0307691 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 07691&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0307691

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0307691

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().